Monday, May 26, 2008

Had some fun with copper and cool blue or rather sea foam blue green beads:

Roman Bangle

This reminded me of Roman mosaics in a pool.

I started off with a heavy gauge copper wire and shaped and hammered it, filing and sanding any sharp bits.

I then started adding the beads with fine copper wire.

You can see below the beads I've used: amazonite cubes in shades of blue, pale green jade cubes and lovely pale blue aquamarine (rectangle) beads. I've finished it off with a 3 very, very pale green Magatama drops. It took me about half a day to wrap all the beads around, there are loads of them to achieve this lovely mosaic effect.

Wave Bangle: Copper

I really had fun with this, although my hands wouldn't agree.

This is my wave bangle:

I first cut it out of copper sheet, then filed and sanded it smooth.

Finally, I added some handmade hole to pull it together and hammered it some more over a bangle mandrel. I added some handmade jump rings, a handmade copper fish, a little handmade wire spiral and some lovely watery Magatama drops to finish it off.

Here's the bangle just after cutting:

Here you can see close up how the shapes look before filing. You can only get so close to the design with a pair of tin snips!

It took me almost a day to finish this.

Wave Bangle: Fine Silver

This was made from Fine Silver sheet in the same way as the bangle above, although I freehand designed the wave pattern in each case rather than creating a template.

Here you can see the front (top) and back (bottom) of the bangle in more detail.

This is the bangle from the top. To get it this round you really need a bangle mandrel, especially with the little waves that just want to stick out until you hammer them into place.

Below you can also see the two little fish charms and jump rings (all handmade of course).

The Fine Silver Wave is not for sale, the other two bangles will be available from my Etsy shop soon.